Abstraction as the Guarantee of Human Will

I found, beyond any shadow of doubt, that Concretion is the fertile soil of every tyranny in the human order. The despot, in essence, is one who concretises the truth in his own person; the closed sect is one that concretises salvation in its material rituals alone. Abstraction, by contrast, is the one final guarantee that true will can come into play, for the simple reason that it binds consciousness to the Absolute, which no human being can monopolise or frame within the limits of a person or a sect. Abstraction breaks the idols of thought before the idols of stone, and frees the Vicegerent from absolute dependence on anything but the Highest Source. My struggle with language taught me that the word is not merely a means of communication. It is a founding instrument of vicegerency: whoever holds the power to define terms holds, in effect, the keys to collective consciousness. My use of these two terms, Concretion and Abstraction, as they stand in my philosophy, was therefore neither intellectual indulgence nor wordplay. It was an existential act of liberation, which I offer to every seeker of truth like myself, far from the interference of others. In the school of Concretion and Abstraction we do not play with words. We use them as safe passages that carry consciousness from the prison of dense clay into the open spaces of subtle light. Concretion and Abstraction are the two lenses through which, with an engineer’s certainty and a researcher’s eye, we watch the movement of creation and command. This pair helped me understand how worlds condense and how spirits ascend. The authenticity of meaning that I hope to establish requires the utmost precision in our terms, so that we do not confuse the one who brings into existence with what is brought into existence, nor let the light of the Source mingle in our consciousness with the shadows of matter. This linguistic struggle was the labour needed to give birth to a way of thinking that seeks to offer a newer vision of the consciousness of the rabbānī Vicegerent, who unites the strength of witnessing with the humility of worship. I do not claim to have achieved what I intended or reached my goal. I claim only that I have stood on the first thresholds and taken the first steps, and have left much ground to others, to complete what I have fallen short of, correct what I have got wrong, and sail out into what I have left for them. No sooner had these two terms settled in my heart than a great calm of knowledge came over me. Suddenly the fog lifted, and I could place every idea, every verse and every feeling within this tightly built dual system. In my consciousness there was no longer any conflict between science and religion, or between the laws of inert matter and the subtlety of the Spirit. Everything works in a coherent superposition, in which Concretion is the stage of interaction and of the fine-tuning of performance, and Abstraction the goal of ascent and the end of the journey. Holding these keys has only deepened my awe before the greatness of the Creator, who made the word the origin of creation — “Be, and it is” — and made clear expression the highest distinction of the human being in His Dominion. Hashem Nassar All rights reserved